Disaster: Day of Crisis UK Review

Panic over.

Remember fun? It's that thing we used to talk about before polygons, hype and multi-million dollar polish took precedence. There's a certain irony then that while you'd be hard pushed to find anything realistically approaching the latter in Disaster: Day of Crisis, it manages to deliver the former in huge, preposterous spades. And preposterous is just about the only accurate way to describe Disaster. From its hackneyed dialogue and B-movie story trappings to its incessant set-pieces and near nonsensical mish-mash of game mechanics, Day of Crisis really shouldn't be anything more than phenomenally rubbish. Yet, against all odds, it's one of the most entertainingly daft game's we've played this year.

Let's start with the basics. As you've probably gathered by now, Disaster forms its fist around three basic game concepts -- on-rails shooting, simplistic racing and perfunctory third-person adventuring, none of which would likely stand up to any form of scrutiny on their own. Yet it's the game's relentless schizophrenia that ultimately wins out, dwarfing its omnipresent close-call potential for mediocrity in frenzied bouts of relentless juxtaposition and a gleeful sense of kitchen-sink experimentation.

It's not just the bizarre tangle of game mechanics that alleviate Disaster from titular doom. There's the omnipresent catastrophic natural phenomenon too, with developer Monolith Soft taking its basic conceit and wringing it for all its worth. Throughout the course of the game you'll tackle volcanic eruptions, fire storms, tornadoes, typhoons, flash floods and more. It's giddyingly silly but relentlessly unpredictable and gloriously compulsive as a result. It's here that the fragmented approach to gameplay really proves its worth. There's such a massive amount of diversity and playful imagination on offer that progress is fairly irresistible, despite the game's fragmented structure and occasional blunders into rough-edged implementation. One minute you're caught in the current of rampaging flood water or slaloming down the side of an active volcano, the next you're hosing your way through a burning subway carriage, administering CPR or skydiving in a monsoon.

Despite the diversity, each stage follows a rough structure, with third-person adventuring bookending frequent bouts of gunplay and civilian rescue. It's part-platformer, part-puzzler and part-mini-game extravaganza, even if obstacles are fairly arbitrary and objectives fairly condescending in their simplicity. At first, none of these elements gel in a particularly satisfying way but that's largely the fault of the faintly patronising first chapter which prefers to over-explain than entertain. Once you're beyond that particular blip though, the idiosyncratic method in Disaster's madness becomes much more obvious, with the endless procession of unexpectedly varied and creative mechanics proving surprisingly engaging.

As an example, there's Disaster's health meter which incorporates the concept of stamina as a secondary layer. It's not a totally original idea but it's masterfully integrated within the overall game world and its endless procession of hazards. Practically every adverse environmental aspect -- from extreme temperatures to smoke -- depletes your stamina, and once that's empty your health takes a hit. That means you need to use your various power-ups sparingly, alongside keeping a watchful eye on the way you approach a level. Overexertion, for instance, rapidly reduces your stamina levels, yet you'll need to rely on your sprint to avoid fire damage and smoke inhalation. It's a constant juggling act, knowing what actions to use and when, with rapid waggling required to extinguish flames if you get too close and timed breathing needed to clear your lungs in unventilated areas. Initially, these disparate elements seem like superficial annoyances but as the game's disaster threat escalates, Day of Crisis hits its stride and there's an underlying rhythm to proceedings which really brings everything together to create a largely satisfying whole.

In fact, that's also true for the game's on-rails shooting segments which start off as little more than sloppy point-and-click-fests before eventually reaching a far more satisfying equilibrium. At first, you'll likely hate the loose, laggy reticule aiming and with good reason -- it's never a good idea to hobble a player's abilities in the name of eventual progress but, thankfully, it's not long before weapon and skill upgrades tighten things up for a far more responsive, rounded experience. Using points garnered through rescue and combat, it's possible to radically expand your arsenal, with each weapon offering numerous opportunities for improvement. Likewise, protagonist Ray's abilities -- from digestion to item capacity -- can be bolstered, all of which quickly improves the game's general sense of pace and flow.